Berenice

Written in 1835 by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

This version originally published in 2005 byInfomotions, Inc. This document is distributed

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Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem,curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas. --Ebn Zaiat.

Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform.Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are asvarious as the hues of that arch, --as distinct too, yet as intimatelyblended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is itthat from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? --from thecovenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is aconsequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Eitherthe memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonieswhich are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.

My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will notmention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honoredthan my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called arace of visionaries; and in many striking particulars --in thecharacter of the family mansion --in the frescos of the chief saloon--in the tapestries of the dormitories --in the chiselling of somebuttresses in the armory --but more especially in the gallery ofantique paintings --in the fashion of the library chamber --and,lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there ismore than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.

The recollections of my earliest years are connected with thatchamber, and with its volumes --of which latter I will say no more.Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to

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say that I had not lived before --that the soul has no previousexistence. You deny it? --let us not argue the matter. Convincedmyself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembranceof aerial forms --of spiritual and meaning eyes --of sounds, musicalyet sad --a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memorylike a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like ashadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while thesunlight of my reason shall exist.

In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night ofwhat seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regionsof fairy-land --into a palace of imagination --into the wilddominions of monastic thought and erudition --it is not singularthat I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye --that Iloitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth inreverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon ofmanhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers --it iswonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life--wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character ofmy commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me asvisions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land ofdreams became, in turn, --not the material of my every-dayexistence-but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.

Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in mypaternal halls. Yet differently we grew --I ill of health, and buriedin gloom --she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hersthe ramble on the hill-side --mine the studies of the cloister --Iliving within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to themost intense and painful meditation --she roaming carelesslythrough life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or thesilent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! --I call upon hername --Berenice! --and from the gray ruins of memory a thousandtumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly isher image before me now, as in the early days of herlight-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh!sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! --Oh! Naiad among itsfountains! --and then --then all is mystery and terror, and a talewhich should not be told. Disease --a fatal disease --fell like thesimoom upon her frame, and, even while I gazed upon her, thespirit of change swept, over her, pervading her mind, her habits,and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible,disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the destroyercame and went, and the victim --where was she, I knew her not--or knew her no longer as Berenice.

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Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by thatfatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible akind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may bementioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, aspecies of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself--trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and fromwhich her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlinglyabrupt. In the mean time my own disease --for I have been told thatI should call it by no other appelation --my own disease, then, grewrapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of anovel and extraordinary form --hourly and momently gaining vigor--and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensibleascendancy. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in amorbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysicalscience termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am notunderstood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible toconvey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate ideaof that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, thepowers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buriedthemselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objectsof the universe.

To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted tosome frivolous device on the margin, or in the topography of abook; to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, ina quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the door;to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of alamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over theperfume of a flower; to repeat monotonously some common word,until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to conveyany idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion orphysical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence longand obstinately persevered in; --such were a few of the mostcommon and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition ofthe mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, butcertainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.

Yet let me not be misapprehended. --The undue, earnest, andmorbid attention thus excited by objects in their own naturefrivolous, must not be confounded in character with thatruminating propensity common to all mankind, and moreespecially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was noteven, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition orexaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentiallydistinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or

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enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous,imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness ofdeductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at theconclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury, he finds theincitamentum or first cause of his musings entirely vanished andforgotten. In my case the primary object was invariably frivolous,although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision,a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, weremade; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the originalobject as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable; and, atthe termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being outof sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interestwhich was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, thepowers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as Ihave said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, thespeculative.

My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritatethe disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in theirimaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristicqualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, thetreatise of the noble Italian Coelius Secundus Curio "deAmplitudine Beati Regni dei"; St. Austin's great work, the "City ofGod"; and Tertullian "de Carne Christi," in which the paradoxicalsentence "Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est: etsepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est" occupied myundivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitlessinvestigation.

Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivialthings, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken ofby Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks ofhuman violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds,trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. Andalthough, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyonddoubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in themoral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for theexercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature Ihave been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in anydegree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity,indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreckof her fair and gentle life, I did not fall to ponder frequently andbitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange arevolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But thesereflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were

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such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to theordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorderrevelled in the less important but more startling changes wroughtin the physical frame of Berenice --in the singular and mostappalling distortion of her personal identity.

During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surelyI had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence,feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passionsalways were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning--among the trellissed shadows of the forest at noonday --and inthe silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and Ihad seen her --not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as theBerenice of a dream --not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as theabstraction of such a being-not as a thing to admire, but to analyze--not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstrusealthough desultory speculation. And now --now I shuddered in herpresence, and grew pale at her approach; yet bitterly lamenting herfallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that she had lovedme long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.

And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when,upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, --one of thoseunseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse ofthe beautiful Halcyon*, --I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in theinner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes I saw thatBerenice stood before me.

*For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven daysof warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time thenurse of the beautiful Halcyon --Simonides.

Was it my own excited imagination --or the misty influence ofthe atmosphere --or the uncertain twilight of the chamber --or thegray draperies which fell around her figure --that caused in it sovacillating and indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke noword, I --not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chillran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressedme; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking backupon the chair, I remained for some time breathless andmotionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! itsemaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being,lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances atlength fell upon the face.

The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; andthe once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed thehollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow,

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and Jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with thereigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless,and lustreless, and seemingly pupil-less, and I shrank involuntarilyfrom their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin andshrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, theteeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to myview. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, havingdone so, I had died!

The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I foundthat my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from thedisordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, andwould not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of theteeth. Not a speck on their surface --not a shade on their enamel--not an indenture in their edges --but what that period of her smilehad sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now evenmore unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth! --the teeth!--they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly andpalpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with thepale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their firstterrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania,and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence.In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughtsbut for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire. Allother matters and all different interests became absorbed in theirsingle contemplation. They --they alone were present to the mentaleye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of mymental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in everyattitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon theirpeculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused uponthe alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them inimagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even whenunassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. OfMad'selle Salle it has been well said, "que tous ses pas etaient dessentiments," and of Berenice I more seriously believed que toutesses dents etaient des idees. Des idees! --ah here was the idioticthought that destroyed me! Des idees! --ah therefore it was that Icoveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone everrestore me to peace, in giving me back to reason.

And the evening closed in upon me thus-and then the darknesscame, and tarried, and went --and the day again dawned --and themists of a second night were now gathering around --and still I satmotionless in that solitary room; and still I sat buried inmeditation, and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its

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terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, itfloated about amid the changing lights and shadows of thechamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as ofhorror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded thesound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings ofsorrow, or of pain. I arose from my seat and, throwing open one ofthe doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber aservant maiden, all in tears, who told me that Berenice was --nomore. She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, andnow, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for itstenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed.

I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting therealone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused andexciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was wellaware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred.But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive --atleast no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete withhorror --horror more horrible from being vague, and terror moreterrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record myexistence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligiblerecollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while everand anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercingshriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I haddone a deed --what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, andthe whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, "what was it?"

On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a littlebox. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequentlybefore, for it was the property of the family physician; but howcame it there, upon my table, and why did I shudder in regardingit? These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and myeyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to asentence underscored therein. The words were the singular butsimple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat, "Dicebant mihi sodales sisepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum forelevatas." Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my headerect themselves on end, and the blood of my body becomecongealed within my veins?

There came a light tap at the library door, and pale as the tenantof a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild withterror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and verylow. What said he? --some broken sentences I heard. He told of awild cry disturbing the silence of the night --of the gatheringtogether of the household-of a search in the direction of the sound;

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--and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me ofa violated grave --of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet stillbreathing, still palpitating, still alive!

He pointed to garments;-they were muddy and clotted with gore.I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand; --it was indentedwith the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to someobject against the wall; --I looked at it for some minutes; --it was aspade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the boxthat lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor itslipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; andfrom it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments ofdental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white andivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about thefloor.

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Colophon

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